Flower and fruit characteristics of natural olive stands in Ilamprovince

ABSTRACT: Domestication of olive started thousands of years ago at many parts of the world and used as a method for tree selection from the wild. Iran has many individual olive genotypes that spread in different parts like Kermanshah, Ilam, Kerman, Fars, Gorgan, zanjan and Gilan provinces. There are many natural stands of olive in Ilam province west of Iran. There isnʹt some exact information on native genotypes for future program like introduce new cultivars and breeding program. Identification of olive germplasm is an essential requirement to know about our native and adopted genetic resources for future programs. Identification of such genetic resources is very important not only for breeding programs but also for selecting suitable genotypes as a new cultivar. An experiment was conducted to evaluate 43 natural olive stands based on flower and fruit characteristics. Results show that there are significant differences between genotypes and cluster analysis divide our studied genotypes to 6 groups. Hope genotypes recommended in this study were SKE8 whit upper fruit weight 5.2 gr and genotypes KF1, 2 whit fruit weight 4.2 gr and genotype PG3 whit 3.71 relation pulp whit stone.